


torn at the seams

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Sort of A Coma Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27754918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: But hours ago, life was good, normal as it ever gets. Now it is, whatever the outcome of this attempt on her husband’s life, forever altered.OR: it's up to Katara to pick up the pieces when the aftermath of an assassination attempt leaves Zuko in shambles.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 65





	torn at the seams

**Author's Note:**

> This is a mess, I know. I also know that I took hecka artistic liberties with how comas work. But you know what? This is here now, and y'all can read it if y'all want. Enjoy.

No coming storm ever seems to bring calm to Caldera.

Tonight, the world carries on in blissful ignorance of the building bank of clouds, and as the world spins in dizzying color, they pick up their heels and keep time. They are half-drunk on music and lantern light and the fragrance of spice and one another as they join the revelers. Katara throws her head back and laughs up at the sky as if in defiance, as if she is daring the stars to cross her on a night like this, when all she knows is giddy joy and a feast for the senses, a heart that skips in rhythm with the beating of the drums and the warmth of her husband’s hands at her shoulder and the small of her back.

Zuko meets her eyes when she opens them again, returning to the ground for the moment she needs to remind herself that she is gravity’s prisoner as much as anyone else. She thinks he might murmur something as he moves his hand from her waist to brush a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, but she doesn’t hear it over the sounds of music and merriment. But it’s hard to miss the look in his eyes as they shift from the soft golden glow of contentment to the molten amber of determination. Katara’s sure her eyes rage like the sea as they meet his, though this time in heart-pounding anticipation and not in anger, and he takes her wrist, setting a pace that she quickly doubles as they leave the floor. He’s close to tripping over the hem of his cumbersome ceremonial robes as they run and she is laughing, her joy carrying outwards on the gentle breeze, when they stop.

  
“Hi,” Katara murmurs, pressing a hand to his chest. Usually they are cool; tonight, though, they are as warm as Zuko’s.

“Hi.”

They glance at each other, then at the floor and the crowds and the guests who were no doubt watching them as they stoke away, then back at each other. Zuko’s eyes drop conspicuously to Katara’s lips and she laughs, using the hand pressed to his chest to balance herself as she rises on her toes and leans her forehead against his. “You’re not smooth,” she teases.

His arms come to rest on either side of her waist. “I don’t need to be, as long as I get my point across.”

Katara smirks, though she can’t manage to give the teasing curve of her lips a single sharp edge right now. “Your point being…?”

He ducks his head just enough to brush her lips, then pulls back, a question in his eyes. Katara shakes her head before her free hand grasps his collar, and she pulls him down to kiss her _properly,_ warm and clumsy and good-hearted. She tries not to laugh into the kiss, but she cannot; when he pulls away, she bursts into laughter again, resting her forehead against Zuko’s sternum to hide her face as it reddens with exertion. She doesn’t know _why_ she’s laughing, but she cannot seem to stop, and though Zuko does not understand what’s so amusing, his hands settle at her waist again, hemming her in. He wants to bottle this moment, take a sip when he needs to remind himself what he’s fighting for. He’s certain that there could be no cordial more refreshing.

What precedes the storm, this time, is not calm but celebration.

(Katara remembers that night with the unwavering bitterness of misplaced enmity for the rest of her life – for failing to warn her, if nothing else.)

* * *

Festivals have a sort of warming effect; everyone’s spirits are higher by their ends. And life is _good_ the night after the Solstice Festival, normal as it ever gets.

She wakes beside him. The sun is streaming through their gauzy curtains; he complains of her tardiness, lazily tracing the ridges of her spine in a way that lets Katara know that he really does not mind one bit. She swats his arm, takes half of the covers with her when she gets up and laughs at his indignant squawk of protest, shoots him a challenging retort when she catches him staring as she dresses for the day. (He fires back, and merely smirks when he notices that she is doing the same.) They breakfast without the children, who’ve been allowed to sleep in after the later-than-usual night they had; conversation is light and Zuko offers his arm to Katara as they make their way (purposefully slow) to a meeting with the Minister of Agriculture.

Life is _good,_ normal as it ever gets.

Their knock at the door goes unanswered, and Zuko frowns, muttering something about the Minister’s tardiness; Katara reminds him that he’d leveled the same charge at her just hours earlier and pokes his chest just to see the way his brows furrow in annoyance. He still lets her steal a quick kiss before he goes off to find the Minister, though; she stays behind to wait lest the Minister turn out to be inside and open the door.

Life is _good,_ normal as it ever gets.

Minister Li opens the door to his study after a moment, his clothes still rumpled with sleep, and Katara glances behind her to see if Zuko has realized that he needn’t have gone in search of him yet. He hasn’t arrived, but Katara isn’t worried; he’s probably being thorough, or perhaps stalling. She engages the Minister in the only real conversation that they have ever had outside of a meeting; he is surprised, evidently, but not unpleasantly so. They talk about their children, for there seems to be little else to discuss. She relates the twins’ latest antics and, when he begins to share stories of his own grown children’s earlier years, he _laughs,_ which is a miracle in and of itself. Zuko still isn’t back, but she isn’t worried; the palace is too expansive to expect him back quite yet. Besides, life is _good,_ normal as it ever gets.

She only turns at the sound of footsteps – at least five pairs – and clanking chainmail. _Guards._ Her stomach drops and she barely has time to react before she is surrounded. None of the guards speak to her but it’s clear what is happening: she isn’t going to get free of them.

“What’s happening?” Minister Li asks, half-frantic. “Is the Fire Lady in danger?”

No one answers. A few of the guards exchange a look that Katara doesn’t miss.

(She knows before she hears a single word.)

* * *

She is at his side for hours and she tries everything, but the simple truth which no one wants to acknowledge is all too clear: the poison in his veins took far less time to reach his brain than she did to reach his side.

It did not help, of course, that no one had bothered to _tell_ her what had happened at first. She’d been detained for nearly an hour ( _foolishly, pointlessly),_ and by the time she’d made it to his side, she’d had to pry the story out of a maid who’d been sent to fetch water. Zuko had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing more; a dart that would never have found its mark had he waited one more moment at the Minister’s door had been the conduit of the poison that Katara hasn’t been able to extract. It was that hour; it was that refusal to let her see to her husband that had been his undoing.

The poison in his veins took far less time to reach his brain than she had to reach his side.

“He…may never wake, Your Majesty,” the doctor overseeing his condition had told her, and it had taken every ounce of willpower that Katara possessed not to snap the man’s neck for the audacity to say such a thing when he had not even let her _try_ to save him.nBut there was little she could do; the poison in his veins took far less time to reach his brain than she had to reach his side.

The would-be assassin had used an extract of lily-wort – nonlethal, in theory. But Katara knows all too well what it could do even without a killing blow.

A mind touched by lily-wort will likely never be whole again, and the poison in his veins took far less time to reach his brain than she had to reach his side.

She is weary to the bone when she slumps, her forehead resting against Zuko’s chest as it rises and falls too slowly for comfort.

But hours ago, life was _good,_ normal as it ever gets. Now it is, whatever the outcome of this attempt on her husband’s life, forever altered.

She curses herself; if only she had reached his side faster than the poison in his veins reached his brain.

* * *

The children’s faces are ashen when they’re brought to their father’s side.

(They have barely been awake an hour.)

* * *

They begin to call her Fire Lord, open in their hostility now that the only sovereign whose authority they will accept lies helpless in an infirmary bed. She is the one at whom all of the fingers point in spite of her best efforts; she has studied and experimented and tried every waterbending form imaginable, but none can undo the effects of the poison when it has already done so much damage. She can leach what remains from his blood and she can care for his country and his children, but she can do no more than that for the man she loves.

She cannot think of it without bitterness for a while because life was _good,_ normal as it ever gets, and she thought she would have forever. She thought she would always wake to warmth, enfolded in Zuko’s arms; now, she is thirty-five and as she looks out over the remaining decades of her life as they spread out before her, all she sees are cold, empty sheets. She thought their children would grow up as both of them did not, under the watchful eyes of two loving parents and in the warmth of assurance that they would always have their family; now, when the twins and their sister, nine and barely four, visit their father, a mournful hush falls over the room.

Life was _good,_ normal as it ever was, when she did not hold the weight of a nation on her shoulders; she wonders if her father ever felt this way, defending a tribe as he carried the weight of the knowledge that he had not been able to defend his own family.

Life was _good,_ normal as it ever was, when meetings were nothing more than dull and not a fight to the death, for without Zuko’s tempering influence on their officials, old hostilities go unchecked. Katara is always on guard, ever-vigilant for the sake of her adopted homeland; no tenacity could save her husband, but perhaps it can keep the country he loves intact.

Life was _good,_ normal as it ever was, when she knew the warmth of her husband’s embrace; now, even the heat of a Fire Nation summer chills her to the bone, and his skin is cold and clammy when she presses her lips to his forehead. He does not respond but she can’t bear to leave him without doing so; some nights, she cannot bear to leave him at all, and the staff find her curled up next to him, her head resting against his chest as if to absorb the warmth that no longer radiates from his comatose body. Distantly, she realizes that that has to have something to do with his bending: maybe it is gone, or maybe his body needs all of the energy it can muster just to keep his heart beating. But it _feels_ like a punishment – it’s a constant reminder of her failure.

The poison in his veins reached his brain far faster than she had reached his side; Her husband’s warmth is chilled now, and she is even colder when she wakes by his side than she is when she wakes alone.

Life was _good,_ normal as it ever was, and then an assassin’s dart undid the surest happiness that Katara had ever known.

More often than not, she finds herself crying in her sleep, for the Fire Lady is all her country has left – all her children have left – and she cannot afford to falter when they can see her.

* * *

She is there when his eyes open – of course she is. Hard as Katara tries, busy as she grows, she can never tear herself from Zuko’s side for long. He wakes without warning, motionless, and Katara’s relief at the sight of those beloved eyes is so overwhelming that all she can do is throw her arms around him and cry, burying her tears in the crook of his neck.

It takes her a few long moments to realize that Zuko is still entirely motionless.

Days later, he takes water, sits up, follows the movements of the staff as they wait on him with his eyes, though he needs very little; he is clearly _awake,_ but he does not speak, and he does not recognize anyone.

Katara knows that she should be relieved that, after six months, he is awake and alive, but her stomach still twists when she sees him. This is not _her_ Zuko; this Zuko doesn’t light up when she enters a room, or hold her when she sleeps beside him. He doesn’t recognize his children when they come to see him, cautious in their aversion to seeing their beloved father this way, and though he reflexively squeezes her hand when she squeezes his, that is the extent of his recognition.

It hurts more than she ever would have imagined it could, but Katara no longer has the privilege of letting things bother her. At least not on the outside, where the world is watching. After all, Fire Lord Katara (and she will no longer deny that it is what she is) cannot let anxieties over an unresponsive husband keep her from her work. She has help, of course: Iroh is of as much assistance as he can be, providing the second opinion she’s needed for so long; her family visits as often as possible and she takes small comfort in the brief snatches of joy that such visits bring. Her children have much-needed playmates when their cousins visit and, for a while, they do not think about their father, a shell of a man sitting against the pillows of an infirmary bed he has not left in months.

But she is alone, nearly always. She’d known from the day that she could not wake Zuko that governing would be a trial; what she had not anticipated was the crushing _loneliness_ of it all. She has plenty of people in her corner, yes – her father and brother and sister-in-law, Iroh and Aang and Toph and her children – but loneliness seems suitable, and she sequesters herself away more often than not. It is all too easy to dodge prying eyes, escape into a private study (Zuko’s old one, always – it smells of him) under the guise of “paperwork,” and shut out a world which she hasn’t wanted to acknowledge in months.

And so her days take on a monotone cast: wake, dress, tend to Zuko (she never lets the nurses do more than she can help); meet with advisors, review proposals, tend to Zuko once more, interrogate anyone unlucky enough to be in the room at the time about his condition; take an evening meal with the children, bathe if she has time, fall asleep with arms full of scrolls as she reviews yet more proposals. It is a lonely, thankless existence, but duty compels her, and she has never been able to say no.

It’s a pattern she knows, deep down, that she cannot sustain, but that seems like a problem for another time.

* * *

“Katara, you need to stop.”

It’s Suki who first takes notice of Katara’s weariness, and her brow creases in concern. She knows how Katara tends to toil endlessly when she believes it to be necessary, knows her drive to care for those in need of her assistance at the expense of her own well-being, and she notices the signs whenever she visits her sister-in-law.

“I’m fine, Suki.” Katara manages a tight smile and throws a glance around the hall, looking for an empty office to duck into. No one ever questions the paperwork excuse; if she could just find one-

“You barely speak and every time I see you, you run off to ‘do paperwork.’” Suki stops in front of Katara, crossing her arms. “I know how hard this is for you, but you’re wearing yourself to the bone, Katara.”

“I don’t have a choice.” Katara doesn’t feel like talking, but she doesn’t feel like lying, either.

“You always have a choice, Katara.” Suki lays her hand on Katara’s shoulder and she wilts like a dehydrated flower at the touch. “I mean, not about the work, but…you don’t have to shut us out.” She finally gets Katara to meet her eyes, somehow. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Katara swallows and dips her chin to break eye contact. “I know.”

“Then why do you run from everyone who tries to help you, Katara?” Suki asks gently.

“What would you do if Sokka didn’t even know who you were?”

Suki stares at Katara for a moment that drags out endlessly, looking for all the world as if she’s been slapped across the face.

“I don’t know,” she finally admits, slowly. “But…what I _do_ know is that we all want to help you get through this, and we can’t do that if you keep hiding.”

“I don’t have to accept help,” Katara says under her breath, quiet so that Suki won’t be able to hear her voice break.

“No, you don’t. But it would help you.”

Katara squares her shoulders and paints on the mask of resilience she’s had to wear so often in the past year. “I appreciate it, Suki, but this burden is mine to bear.”

“But not alone.”

Katara lets out a heavy sigh. It is a moment before she speaks again, but when she does, she meets Suki’s eyes the way she hadn’t been able to a moment ago. Her voice is stronger now, clear and unwavering as she makes her reply.

“Only one head wears the crown.”

* * *

“Mama?”

It is early in the morning and Katara is hours from starting her day when she hears her daughter’s voice in the doorway. She was a heavy sleeper once, but she’s learned to be attentive even in sleep now, and she wakes immediately at the sound.

(If vigilance is what she lacked when her husband was ambushed, she will spend the rest of her life making up for it.)

“Kya?” she asks groggily, swinging her legs down from the bed to meet Izumi where she is. She’d rather have just about anything than a child in her bed tonight; she loves her children with all her heart but she is vulnerable in sleep. She need not be the stalwart ruler or the brave-faced mother when she sleeps, and if Kya is here, she must keep up the front. But five-year-old Kya’s golden eyes – so much like her father’s – peer up at Katara, pleading, and, with a heavy sigh, she opens the door to her.

“I had a bad dream,” she says, her lip pouted, and Katara hoists her daughter onto her hip.

“I’m sorry, Kya-bear,” Katara murmurs, her voice still thick with exhaustion. Kya’s head lolls against her shoulder – she’s as tired as her mother is. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

Kya shakes her head and Katara figures that she’ll nod off as soon as her head hits the pillow. She breathes a sigh of relief when Kya does just that and lies down beside her, almost afraid to touch her without even knowing why. But Kya, who is as reliant upon touch as a means of expression as her father is, quickly spoils that plan when she curls up into her mother’s side, her round, sad face peaceful in sleep. Katara cannot help brushing the curls out of her eyes to kiss her forehead and she finds that she sleeps easily this way, her daughter by her side.

She rescinds that statement when she wakes to tiny hands frantically shaking her awake.

“Kya?” she murmurs, and her half-asleep eyes widen in horror when she realizes that there’s moisture where her head rested seconds ago and her voice is tight with tears. “Wha’s wrong?”

Kya’s wide golden eyes are visible even in the dark. “You were crying,” she says, her voice wobbly with concern. “I di’n’t know you could cry while you were sleeping and I got scared and I…I…”

“Oh, Kya,” Katara sighs, pulling her daughter close and praying she won’t make more of this than she already has. “Mama’s okay.”

“Okay people don’t cry while they’re sleeping!” Kya protests, every bit as stubborn as both of her parents, and she squirms in Katara’s arms.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Kya-bear.”

“But why?” Kya finally manages to squirm out of her grip and looks her in the eyes again. “Why were you crying?”

She’s not even thinking when she blurts out, “because I miss Daddy.”

Kya’s lip begins to wobble and Katara can’t hold back the choked sob that fights its way to the surface at the sight. Before she knows it, Kya is throwing herself into Katara’s arms, and her tears wet the fabric of her mother’s nightgown. Katara tries to soothe her, stroking her hair as she’s always done when her children are upset, but it’s hard to focus on that when she’s so close to tears herself.

_Don’t make things worse for her,_ part of Katara insists. But the other _wants_ this – wants Kya to know that it’s okay to miss her father, okay to mourn. And an even louder voice tells her that she needs to let this out.

So when Kya cries, she does not stop herself from crying alongside her.

* * *

It has been one year, three months, two weeks, and four days now. Katara always notes this, because it is the first thing she tells Zuko each morning.

“That’s…fifteen and three-fifths months,” Katara tells him, sitting at Zuko’s bedside. He never replies, but she cannot bear the thought that he might sit in uninterrupted silence, so she talks to him as if nothing at all is the matter. “Kya’s learning to read, Izumi’s learning not to burn the furniture in her bedroom to ashes, and my stupid council needs to learn how to shut up.”

She hates calling it _her_ council when it should be _theirs –_ after all, _he_ was the one born to take this throne. But after one year, three months, two weeks, and four days, nothing about the Fire Nation is Zuko’s anymore.

Bitterly, in her lowest moments, she wonders where she’d be now – how much happier – if she’d never married into this family at all. But she always bites back the thoughts, and memories tinged with bitterness float through her mind to taunt her with the good times, to remind her that things were not always so hopeless.

(She holds her children close and she tries not to regret this; after all, he had nearly died to protect her and the least she can do is live to protect _him.)_

It’s the secret behind her capacity for sacrifice, that ability to cling to long-gone happiness. There are moments when her resolve slips and she regrets the choices she has made on behalf of her family and of this nation, but she always seems to remember why she made them in the end. It is her childhood rehashed: caring for those in need of her care because, once upon a time, they had been her everything, and because there was no one else around to do it. And she _does_ love her family: her children are the one spot of joy in her work-wearied existence, and she would do anything – _anything –_ for Zuko.

But the isolation of it all brings her back to a time she thought she’d left behind.

So she speaks to her husband, and when she tells him each day how many days he’s been gone, she knows deep down that what she is really saying is _when are you coming back?_

(She knows and does not care that the answer is, in all likelihood, _never:_ she does not know if she can keep going if she does not believe that this misery will end.)

* * *

_One year, six months, one day._

“They tell me the poison might work its way out of your system,” Katara says hopelessly, “but I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

There seems to be little else to say so she leans her head against Zuko’s chest, cheek pressed to the puckered starburst in its center. She can almost convince herself she feels the brush of a hand working its way through her curls, still matted from sleep and left uncombed, but she shrugs off the notion, her eyes filling with tears she tries in vain not to let out. But the feeling doesn’t subside and she’s had enough.

She raises her head but still, she feels the weight of a hand at the back of her neck. She blinks, certain she’s imagining it. But she meets Zuko’s eyes and there is something like recognition in them.

“Zuko?”

He doesn’t speak – that would be too much to ask, Katara thinks bitterly. But his shaking hand still cradles her head.

“ _Zuko,”_ she chokes, and every weight on her shoulders seems to bear down and dissipate all at once. Either way, all she can do is collapse against his chest again, and this time _both_ of his arms encircle her shoulders; hers respond in kind, instinct overcoming disbelief. He does not say a word and she doesn’t know if he ever will but this is _now,_ and it is a thousand times better than any of the moments that have come before it.

Once, life was _good,_ normal as it ever gets; this is far from either of those things. But it’s the best she’s had in one year, six months, and one day; she’ll take it and run with it.

Maybe this is how she brings herself to go on.


End file.
